


no control

by orphan_account



Category: The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 05:33:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6841015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Oh my God,” Thomas says, tone laced with awe. “You’re British.” </p><p>Newt blinks at him, frown deepening. “And?” </p><p>“I mean,” Thomas hurriedly backpedals, suddenly aware of how creepy he must have sounded. “Not that it matters. Or makes you more attractive to me in any way, pfft.” At Newt’s confused look, he adds, “Not that I think you’re attractive at all! In fact, I just came over here to tell you how totally <i>not</i> attracted I am to you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	no control

“You know,” Thomas says, shoving textbooks into his locker, “I don’t get why everyone’s so worked up about that new transferee. I mean,” he adds. “Did you _see_ the way Brenda was swooning over him during lunch? I honestly thought her eyes were going to fall out onto the table.” 

“I don’t know,” Minho replies, eyes glued on his phone. “Paige assigned him to be my lab partner today. He’s cool.” 

“ _Cool?_ ” Thomas echoes. “You, Minho, the self-proclaimed Only Cool Guy of This School, are bestowing your title upon someone else? There is definitely something going on here.” He narrows his eyes. “You’re in love with him, too, aren’t you?” 

Minho finally looks up at him. The expression on his face is a mixture of exasperation, boredom, and mild amusement. Thomas has no idea how one look can hold so many contrasting emotions, but he’s come to recognize it as a phenomenon that only occurs when he says something particularly stupid. “Totally,” Minho deadpans. 

“I knew it!” Thomas punches the air triumphantly, ignoring Minho’s dull expression. “Don’t worry, man. I can help you out.” 

“I’d rather you didn’t, really,” Minho responds, tone dry. 

Thomas ignores this. “Once I’m done with you, you’ll have Transferee Guy wrapped in your alarmingly strong embrace. I can just _see_ your muscles flexing as you hold him tight in your arms.” 

“You sure you’re not in love with _me_?” Minho drawls, quirking an eyebrow at Thomas. “That’s an oddly specific description of my biceps.” 

Once again, Thomas continues on without acknowledging him. “Seriously, man. It’ll be the most romantic thing this school has ever seen. Imagine you running down the hall, screaming out—” 

“Hey, Newt!” Minho suddenly calls out, cutting Thomas off. 

“Newt? Is that his name?” Thomas asks. He spins around, eager to get a glimpse of Minho’s One True Love. “What does a guy called _Newt_ look like, anyway? Is he a nerd? Does he wear glasses and suspenders and stutter when he talks? Does he…” Thomas’ eyes fall on the unfamiliar guy waving at his best friend and he promptly has to eat his words.

Newt is tall and skinny with styled blonde hair, pale skin, and thin features. He’s wearing a dark blue T-shirt with a low neckline, and Thomas follows the line of it, fighting the desire to map every inch of this guy’s collarbones with his _tongue_. Almost automatically, Thomas’ gaze zooms in on Newt’s lips, which are red and wide and look, wow, insanely soft. 

When Newt’s rounded the corner, Thomas slowly turns towards Minho, eyes the size of the moon. “Oh my God,” he says, voice hoarse. 

Minho leans back against his locker, closes his eyes, and laughs until tears are streaming down his face.

—

Newt runs a hand through his flawless hair, and Thomas swears it _glitters_ underneath the white light of the cafeteria. There’s no way a mere mortal can have hair that _golden_. His parents probably made a deal with the devil when he was born, traded in a few cattle so their son could sit there and offend Thomas with his perfection. 

“Please try and keep your staring to a minimum,” Minho pleads. “You’re making _me_ feel violated with how creepy you’re being.” 

“I am _not_ creepy,” Thomas argues. “There’s nothing wrong with observing him. It’s practically a science,” he sniffs. 

“The Science of Stalking,” Minho intones, and Thomas throws a fry at him. “Seriously, man, just go and talk to him.” 

Thomas nods decisively. “I should, shouldn’t I?” He stands up, dusting crumbs off his body. “Wait,” he says, turning back to look at Minho. “That won’t be too creepy, will it?” 

Minho stares at him, as if amazed by his sheer stupidity. “Get out of my face.” Thomas decides to take that as a no. 

He makes his way across the crowded cafeteria towards where Newt is sitting, trying to ignore the way his heart is thudding in his chest. He can feel Minho’s gaze boring into his back, the full strength of it propelling him forward until he’s standing directly in front of Newt’s table. 

“Hi,” he says, then takes a deep breath. He can do this. Thomas literally never shuts up, so it’s not like it should be a problem trying to engage the hottest guy in the world in a simple conversation. He just needs to steer clear of tricky topics he tends to ramble unnecessarily about, like Minho’s arm muscles, and he’s totally good. He’s just about convinced himself that everything’s going to be fine when Newt finally glances at him. 

“Can I help you?” Newt asks, frowning slightly. The second the question leaves his mouth and Thomas hears Newt’s voice for the first time, every single possible sentence Thomas had prepared to follow up his greeting is wiped from his mind. 

“Oh my God,” Thomas says, tone laced with awe. “You’re British.” 

Newt blinks at him, frown deepening. “And?” 

“I mean,” Thomas hurriedly backpedals, suddenly aware of how creepy he must have sounded. “Not that it matters. Or makes you more attractive to me in any way, pfft.” At Newt’s confused look, he adds, “Not that I think you’re attractive at all! In fact, I just came over here to tell you how totally _not_ attracted I am to you.” 

To his eternal gratitude, Newt just looks completely baffled rather than freaked out. “Thank you?” he replies, eyebrows knitted together. 

“Don't mention it,” Thomas responds weakly, punctuating his sentence with a nervous laugh, hoping it'll break the tension.

It doesn't. The intensity of Newt’s gaze is virtually scorching, and combined with the fact that it suddenly feels like the temperature has risen to a million degrees, the cafeteria is almost stifling. Thomas wrings his hands together, sweaty palms sliding against each other, and when the silence between them stretches to a completely uncomfortable length, Thomas turns around and runs back the way he came from. 

“Do I even want to know how it went?” Minho asks when Thomas slides back into the seat in front of him, a thoroughly miserable look on his face. 

“Not unless you want me to die,” Thomas replies morosely. 

“That bad, huh?” Minho says sympathetically, and Thomas groans and slams his head against the plastic tabletop in response.

—

The key, Thomas decides, to not wanting to disappear off the face of the earth every time he remembers how much of an joke he made of himself, is to pretend like it didn’t happen. And to inconspicuously run the other way whenever he sees Newt walking down the hall. He doesn’t care what Minho says; he likes to believe he _would_ know the meaning of inconspicuous if it came and bit him on the ass. 

“Ugh, I hate this song,” Minho complains as Fergie’s “Glamorous” starts blasting through the speakers on Thomas’ laptop. 

Thomas swats his hand away as he attempts to change it. “My laptop, my rules,” he says, eyes still focused on the worksheet in front of him. “And don’t insult Fergie in my presence.” 

He can practically _hear_ Minho’s eye roll. “Why do you like her so much, anyway?” 

Thomas finally snaps his head up to stare at Minho, hoping to convey the full force of how offended he is by that question through the look on his face. “Because,” he starts, “she’s G-L-A-M…” 

“Oh, God,” Minho groans, looking pained. “Please stop.” 

Thomas continues singing. “…O-R-OH, MOTHERFUCKER!”

Newt is standing in the doorway to the physics lab, eyes fixed on Thomas and lips pressed together in an obvious attempt to repress laughter. “Um,” he manages to say, voice shaking. “This is where we have physics, yeah?” 

“Hey, man,” Minho greets him, cheerfully ignoring the horrified look on Thomas’ face. “Yeah, it is. Class doesn’t start for another fifteen minutes, though.” 

“Uh, yeah,” Newt replies, making his way over to one of the desks near the window. “I thought I’d come in early, seeing as I don’t really know my way around yet. I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” he asks, pointedly staring at the unfinished paper in Thomas’ hands. 

This finally jolts Thomas into action. Careful not to make eye contact with anyone, Thomas carefully packs up his stuff and edges towards the door. “So I’m just gonna, um, yeah.” He jams his thumb in the direction of the hallway and _bolts_. 

Times like these just go to show him how grateful he is for making it onto the track team.

—

Running has always been Thomas’ number one choice of escape. There’s just something about the exhilaration he gets from feeling the wind whip through his body that he’ll never get tired of. It was how he met Minho, back in freshman year, and it’s the been the most effective means of getting Newt out of his head ever since he first saw him all those weeks ago. 

As he’s lined up on the track, the adrenaline pumping through his body, energy steadily humming in his veins, he finds that he can almost forget about his mess of a life. And once the sound of a whistle blowing cuts through the air, he’s off, racing away so fast that everything else fails to catch up with him. 

Thomas is finishing his second lap around the football field when he catches a flash of blonde hair from somewhere in the stands. Refusing to let this break his stride, he faces forward, determinedly not glancing either left or right for the remainder of practice. 

Once it’s over, he finally allows himself to look back at the bleachers, and finds it empty. Shaking his head, Thomas makes his way into the locker room, deciding that what he saw was nothing more than his own twisted imagination.

—

It’s finally Friday, and Thomas is standing in front of his open locker collecting everything he’ll need over the weekend. Once he’s done, he slams the door shut—and nearly has a heart attack when he finds a familiar face waiting on the other side. 

“This is for you,” Newt says, immediately pressing a steaming cup of coffee into Thomas’ right hand. “Minho mentioned it was your favorite.”

“It is,” Thomas replies automatically, taking a sip. “Thanks.” Then his brain catches up with what’s going on and he jerks his hand back down, nearly spilling liquid on himself. “Wait, what?” 

“Minho said I had to do something to get your attention,” Newt explains, but it only serves to increase Thomas’ initial confusion. “Something about you not understanding subtlety,” he adds, one corner of his mouth twitching slightly. 

Thomas blinks at him. “What—” Then the pieces click together. “Minho told you to let me down easy, didn’t he? He told you to give me _this_ ,” he says, waving the coffee in front of Newt’s face, “to soften the blow. Well let me tell you, man, Minho is dead _wrong_.” Thomas is lying through his teeth. The second Newt leaves, he’s going to find an empty classroom and bash his head against the wall. “Because I don’t care if you have hair so golden, Rumpelstiltskin probably spun it himself. Or that God commissioned your voice specifically for you. Or that you have a perfect face—”

“You think I have a perfect face?” Newt interrupts, eyebrows climbing towards his hairline. 

Thomas feels himself flush. “ _No_ ,” he emphasizes. “I also have no opinion on your lips. Or any other part of your anatomy. So just tell me how much you want me to leave you alone and we can all move on with our lives.” 

There’s a pause, and then Newt goes, “I was actually planning to ask you out.” 

“Oh.” Thomas coughs, his cheeks growing even redder. “Um, well, in that case. Feel free to continue. And the answer is yes, by the way,” he says, and Newt smiles at him like it’s the best thing he’s ever heard.


End file.
